Herald Blogs

Road trip in a micro-car (twice)

I
reported earlier on this blog that I was trying out a couple micro-cars — the Smart
Fortwo and the Scion iQ — to see whether I could recommend them for road trips.
The answer: Yes, as long as they are short trips. Read the full story here. But first, here are a couple anecdotes:

The Smart Fortwo parked under a tree at Sebring International Raceway.

The Smart Fortwo is slow with a clunky automatic transmission. I wanted to know just what it would do. I was at Sebring International Raceway on a weekday when the track had no events scheduled. A gate blocked access
to the track, but a long, wide stretch of tarmac runs behind the grandstands — the racetrack started life as an air field — and I couldn't resist. I stomped on the accelerator and hoped no
one in the track offices would notice.

The car slowly chugged
along, hesitating each time it changed gears. It accelerated so slowly that I'm
not even sure accelerating is the correct verb. By the time the car hit 45 mph,
I was halfway to the exit and knew that no one was going to flag me down and
tell me I couldn't race there because I still wasn't going fast enough for
anyone to notice.

The Scion iQ, parked at the Miami Herald.

The Scion iQ, by contrast, is zippy. Not
that I could roar away from a stop and pass a car that was accelerating. But
it's also noisy -- so much so that Siri, the assistant in my iPhone, couldn't understand me over
the constant buzz of the engine. It took three attempts before she understood I wanted her to
send me a reminder that evening. Finally she got it and asked, "What should the reminder
say?"

"I need to take my
camera to work tomorrow."

" 'I hate to go to
work tomorrow.' OK, I'll remind you."

Hmmm. Better not ask Siri
to send a message to the boss when I'm in the iQ.